Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
That said, this LEC charade is sickening and they should be punished as severely as the law allows. Of course it's America and the police can and do get away with murder so that'll never happen.
Edit: Legally I mean. Typically the felony falls on the chain of command in my limited legal understanding.
Edit2: In the US
Anyways...
So, my very limited understanding of civil/city/state governments is that they are already special forms of "Non-Profit Corporate Entities" in most states, "Municipal Corporations"[2]. All other "private law enforcement entities" derive from some variation/bastardization of these laws depending on the state. So yes, most private citizens/corporations, what ever definition of the term[3], can obtain any of the weapons described in the article, with limits/exceptions. For instance, the SWAT team of Dallas, TX is part of the Dallas Police Department (Dallas being a Municipal Corporation). I chose this as an example because, when you google Dallas SWAT, you either get a reality TV show or a Facebook Page. In most smaller counties, it is part of the county Sherifs Department. In most states, the only person that can arrest a Sherif is the Governor or Agent of The Federal Government. Stay with me. This is all an argument of semantics from the beginning.
US entities operating outside the US borders obtain literally what ever equipment they, or their clients, can afford. Further, they are either bound by US Military rules of conduct (rules of engagement), beholden to local law, or either/neither seemingly as the parties see fit [see current US military advisor rules in Iraq vs. Blackwater authorization in Op. Iraqi Freedom].
My reading of this article is the scenario last referenced on US soil. A claim that a local SWAT team is both and neither. The power of a government law enforcement agency with the "loosely defined rights" of a private corporation (individual.) It is "risk management" in the corporate sense. You structure yourself for greatest legal/financial protection/benefit.
Grey area -- rant. Expand this to the Federal Government... The FBI is the only organization that is authorized to investigate wrong doing within itself[4]. In addition, the federal government can chose whether or not you are aloud to sue them in federal court (all courts by proxy.)[5]
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954347/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_corporation [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/us/in-150-shootings-the-fb... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...
http://blogs.reuters.com/financial-regulatory-forum/2012/12/...
Johannes Mehserle, for instance, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter while on duty as a BART cop, but it's my understanding that he has continued to serve in a new police department.
obviously, this is atrocious.
...right?
...I guess I don't know. Maybe the situation has gone that far.
No way of really knowing; America is a place fully without the rule of law at this point, and it's whatever the men with guns say goes.
If their answer to that is "well, we have this special contract from the government...", then they are agents of the government and can't hide behind the "private corporation" shield for activities they undertake as such agents. Certainly that's how it works for Federal government contractors: if the GAO audits a Federal program, the contractors who implement it can't hide their records from the auditors with the excuse "oh, we're private corporations".
"we may have paid for those kayaks, but we gave them to this other organization that is basically us, but it is not the organization that owes you transparency, so fuck off."
[1] http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/people-representative#tab...
Sheesh. Kids.
It is very easy to forget that just because some stories of a certain kind are true, not all of them are true.
— Alexander Hamilton
So if this (like last time) is the low that we will improve from after the bright light of transparency was shined on the enterprise, then the U.S. will be in great shape.
I find this more than a little strained for a number of reasons.
1. Imagine the horror of a world where the USA looked more like Canada and slavery probably ended without the bloodiest war in North America's history. 2. British tyranny was light. At the time of the American Revolution the Crown's North American subjects were richer and less lightly taxed than its British ones. 3. Military and transportation technology have advanced radically since that time. No European power managed to subdue trans-Atlantic rebellions from established settler states. The US armed forces are designed for fighting two major wars at a time and have oceans to east and west and client states to north and south. They would have no problem subduing "terrorists" or "seditionists".
If history is to be repeated the US will die and it will die screaming.
1. http://www.unlearningliberty.com/ 2. http://www.anneapplebaum.com/iron-curtain-the-crushing-of-ea...
Living in a developing country like India, I'm sometimes half-thankful that our police is inept, woefully ill-equipped with weapons and government-controlled.
Also, while the school to prison pipeline is a dire issue in parts of the country, private prisons are still a fraction of total US prisons.
Humanity is barely keeping itself in check in a complex system that has developed over time, with multiple forms of organization, and multiple levels of checks and balances. Most attempts at massive restructuring has failed horribly, either if it's been in the direction of socialized organization, or private organization. Both were supposed to lead to flatter structures and less abuse, but in fact lead to the polar opposite.
But at the quip of an internet comment we're expected to realize in a flash of insight that "oh! it's so simple! if we just do it like this it will all be perfect."
Aren't the both bad? One for the lack of agreed upon standards , regulations and criminal, civil consequences, and the other for manipulating the playing field in favor of the few, and the power, removing from the the expectations of standards, regulations and criminal, civil consequences.
Unfair, unjust markets are terrible either way. Or am I mistake about one vs the other?
Isn't it great to be a man?
[edit: I realize this flippant remark probably makes little sense for those who don't live in India. Ineffective policing is a very serious problem here, primarily for women. If I stay out late with a girl, it's almost automatic that I will escort her home regardless of the inconvenience to me. Black women often wear a keffiyeh at night to avoid racially motivated attacks. Physical security is a significant electoral issue.]
I think you make an important (if biting) point for putting the parent in some context.
That works for those holding on to even the lowermost rungs of the middle class. Below that the condition of women, oppressed by caste and class(not direct but still a strong co-relation), their plight is hellish to even think of.
If you're talking about private prisons only something like 2% of inmates are in private prisons.
I don't disagree, that's basically the core conclusion of public choice theory, but I suspect that's not what you meant?
I probably agree with your comment about unions, but that's a much broader statement than I was shooting for. I specifically think that the prison and anti-drug lobbies are vile, because they use their power to create and increase enforcement of laws[1] that enslave arguably innocent people (drug users and people that fell afoul of three strikes laws), purely for the benefit of their members. It's not just unions siphoning off tax dollars here, it's perpetuating war ("the war on drugs") against the US citizenry (and unwittingly or not giving power to organized crime, and causing worldwide violence and unrest, etc. etc. you've heard this story before).
I bring up construction workers etc. because it's not hard to imagine a web connecting the companies that build the prisons to the police chiefs mandating arrest quotas to the "tough on crime" politicians and so on, along with their pocketbooks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...
Likewise, just because these police organizations are using 501(c)3 to provide a corporate shield, a reasonable judge should say that the shield is unlawful.
I kind of get a feeling that national security will eventually be trotted out here.
However, that is not the issue here. The ACLU is arguing (rightly) that even though these entities are corporations, they are acting as agents of the government, and thus should be required to follow laws pertaining to government agencies.
The government regularly gives public property to private entities and claims they no longer have possession. Then they make a contract so they can have access. (Obviously, you don't get access without paying the price.) They do this with The Law (tm)(c) for example. California (the Office of Administrative Law) doesn't even have possession of the codified regulations they make (the California Code of Regulations). Which is why you have to be wealthy to have bulk access to California law (regulations are a form of secondary or delegated legislation) or otherwise have to agree to a license for the "free" (as in beer not as in freedom) Internet version where you give up your rights to your first unborn child etc. (Though the website is practically unusable for any layman who hasn't already read most of it. Of course to encourage you to buy the CD-ROM.)
Which of course leads to a breakdown in law and order.
Are you saying that there's law in California (i.e. something you can violate that the justice system has the authority to punish you over) that is not freely (as in freedom) available to any citizen (for whatever purpose, reading, distributing, etc)?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/07/s...
It is available online, but its unusable for the layman due to ridiculously bad design. You must agree to a contract to use it ("terms of use", "license") and promise never to repeat what you read. Purposely bad design in my opinion. Its 30,000 sections of regulations we're talking about here (there's a further 150,000 sections of California law, 50,000 sections of federal law, and 30,000 sections of federal regulations), and you only know it doesn't apply after you read it. Its javascript-based and uses session cookies, so if you take longer than 5 minutes to read a 30 page section with a bad layout that uses intensely complex verbiage, the next click will "close the book" in your face, and if you have no idea where you were, well, tough luck, there's always prison. If you try and open multiple windows, say, to read another section which is referred to, each window will interfere with each other. (Even trying will likely close the book in your face.) Each click is unbearably slow to load. (29,999 bottles of beer on the wall, 29,999 bottles of beer, take one down, can't pass it around, 30,001 bottles of beer on the wall.) There is no way to give a permalink to your grandma or on your blog, because there are no permalinks. Grandma will have to try and navigate the horrible website herself, and when she likely fails, well, tough luck, there's always prison.
It is available as bulk data on CD-ROM (in California) for a significant price, on the order of $3000 per edition. Did I mention it changes almost constantly? Obviously, no permalinks for your blog.
California is better than most in that the government was sued and forced to release the statutory law on the web.[1] Other states are not so lucky.
I know this sounds lame, but freedom isn't free, and you shouldn't have to give up any rights to access the laws that bind you. Period. No exceptions. No compromise.
(I should note the biggest problem with this seems to be codified regulations, not so much the codified laws or gazettes, although some states do require a contract to view the "free" versions of the statutes, such as Georgia and Colorado. And I should note the online version of the Code of Massachusetts Regulations from the Secretary of the Commonwealth costs $110 per year and requires a credit card...)
Usually the law as enacted by the legislature / ruled by the courts is free, but they might incorporate by reference some non-free rules developed and maintained by commercial entities. These are things like building codes, fire codes, and so on, which might cost thousands of dollars for a copy and not be redistributable. [2] The recentish example (2002) is Veeck vs. SBCCI[3].
[1] https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2008/04/16/can-states-...
[2] http://simplesupports.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/building-code...
[3] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Veeck_v._Southern_Building_Cod...
You could make a Public Records Act request under California State Law,which is conceptually similar.
Anyone who is a lawyer know?
But I'm going to play devil's advocate, because I want to know the truth:
I wonder if there are other, possibly more important reasons for forming these private corporations. Maybe the existing police system doesn't function optimally, and provisioning resources (such as trained officers with appropriate equipment for drug busts) is a process that's too slow, or inadequate. Maybe this is a way of detouring the bureaucracy and systemic bullshit that encumbers civil servants whose job is ultimately to keep people safe.
The article says that Tewksbury, MA paid $4600 for membership to NEMLEC. That town has a population of around 28 000. It doesn't make sense for a small town like that to have a police force with a dedicated SWAT team, computer crimes unit and schools incident response team. It also doesn't make sense for a larger jurisdiction to serve the smaller community when it [the smaller community] needs it, and get nothing in return. It seems as though it's a way for police departments to share resources. I'd imagine that if a small town's police department found themselves unable to deal with a time-critical scenario, like a shooter in a school, they'd call in backup pretty damned quickly. Perhaps the quality of response a small town could get through NEMLEC would be better than going through traditional police channels?
To me it seems like the primary purpose of forming these private NPCs is not secrecy. As the article says, government police agencies already do that - "police agencies have broadly interpreted open records laws to allow them to turn down just about every request."
So, if it is actually easy for police agencies to turn down requests in the first place, why go to all the effort to form, finance, and manage a 3200 member [1] corporation?
[1] http://www.nemlec.com/who.htm
edit: clarified a sentence by adding 'through NEMLEC'
The most important question here is, who exactly authorizes the use of force by NEMLEC? This, as is, allows undisclosed use of force whenever the powers that be (I believe police chiefs) feel like it, without the need for disclosure.
This is essentially an unregulated regional army. Paid for with taxes, but not actually beholden to the tax payer.
Why would somebody form that? That depends on how paranoid you want to think.
Wrong. It all sounds like a militarized police force with little to no responsibility. For example, the SWAT launched a flash bang grenade in the crib of a 2 year old. But you know, the SWAT response was a botchet attempt at finding a non-violent drug crime.
The kid still has a hole in his body that hasn't healed. And they are unsure of brain damage. It's likely though.
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/a_swat_team_blew_a_hole_in_m...
Using heavily armed SWAT teams to conduct raids on family homes for small-time drug offenses seems like a policy decision to me...
Have 2 cars with 2-4 cops go arrest everyone and then look for drugs, given an appropriate warrant. If you see heavy arsenal, THEN calling in heavy guns can be called for.
But you dont just show up at someone's house with SWAT by default and do whatever you want. That's just wrong. But that's done. Just go look up the new phenomenon "Swatting".
You do realize that the article highlights the fact that regardless of the employment of the officers involved, the argument is being made that "an operation" was conducted as NEMLEC, a private corporation not beholden to open information requests.
Off duty officers shoot people. Some times they are just acting as private citizens. Sometimes they are uniformed private security. Other times they are just plain old moon-lighted security. The legal protection carried by the civil police force to the officer varies under each of these scenarios. The actual police force that the officer is on the payroll of is "usually" not obligated to defend the officer under any of these considering the scenario of a lawsuit, wrongful death, civil liberties, or misconduct. Further, there is usually some Union (non-government entity) involved with similar obligations/exceptions for defending the officer.
The thing is that a lot of that bureaucracy is there explicitly to slow down and provide scrutiny over one of the most vulnerable to corruption parts of government. The people who enforce the law, without supervision, can easily become the law, and that's extremely dangerous for civil society.
How are these any different?
Even if they are contractors for specialized policing (something I find dubious, but am not sure is actually a bad idea), why wouldn't they still be subject to regulation as government employees while performing government work?
I don't think the term "privatize" reflects the situation as described in the article or as described in the organization's website. According to all the descriptions, everyone involved in the organization is a public employee acting in their official capacity. This makes all of it's activities the activities of the government.
Maybe, this consortium was originally formed to save some money. Police and fire departments band together in a variety of forms. But contrary to your line of reasoning, this is neither a justification for secrecy nor is that a reason not to be interested in this situation. What is important and disturbing is that this isn't privatization as such but rather this is a public entity relabeling activities as private and claiming immunity to public scrutiny on that basis (not that overt privatization doesn't have it's own problems).
Disturbing as the present efforts to evade scrutiny are, we should take note that this sort of deceptive relabeling of government activities can potentially open the door to local government evading any and all regulations that the courts and state laws might place on them (though hopefully this stuff will fall apart "in the light of day").
Far too many bad actors blend back into the group and repeat their misdeeds over and over again.
A friend of mine had his feet put to the fire during sentencing by a federal judge over whether he thought it was 'funny' to bring a 'department of injustice' sign to a protest where he was later arrested for assaulting a marshall, who in fact kind of stumbled into him and then created a melee.
The judge seemed quite clearly to believe that he was a part of the 'department of justice', though the DoJ was the plaintiff in the case before him.
Even when you get a precedent set about the role and behavior of law enforcement, it's very difficult to get judges to apply it sanely.
"Well, you see, in this prior case the defendent had yellow shoes, so..."
That said, something has to be done.
Only a judge could see that building corporate headquarters is a public use, or that growing a plant in your basement is interstate commerce.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."I would assume you could query each individual agency as to how often their officers participate in swat operations, but without knowing how often the LEC was called, I don't see how you could get an accurate count of the total raids. Perhaps each jurisdiction would have to report how often they called the LEC into their jurisdiction.
They may be actually be legally right due to basically a technicality. Perfect for time for the state legislature to reign in the LECs and make open records apply to mutual aid agencies/agreements. I'm sure their representatives are jumping on that right now...
It's possible for a cop to have an off-duty job just as much as it's possible for most other government employees to have a hobby (and possibly get paid for it).
But these cops can't have their cake and eat it too. If while acting as a private enterprise they happen to come across a situation requiring them to act as an off-duty cop, then they should be treated as a cop for that situation, which includes liability to answer to records requests. If they're going to employ their public immunity to charges for some actions then they should be held to all the other responsibilities of being a public employee for that time.
Who expects that? Judges failed to stem the growth of militarized police forces for decades.
The real cynical view is not that judges are feckless, it is that people in general don't care about things that don't much affect them.
Maybe I should work on founding the OCP today...
It's all the US. It's all the current system. Yes, the constitution has been drastically weakened by money interests. Yes.
I went to Austin, TX a couple weeks back to be my Brother's best man. I didn't realize he was marrying a cop's daughter in a rural area outside the city limits, because all he told me about the guy was he's a skydiver. I fly paragliders, so I figured we had a lot in common.
There's a really good reason all the souveneirs in the area say "Austin City Limits"! It's because if you're a beta male, you really shouldn't stray too far outside into the Red State. You really, really shouldn't.
Within an hour of getting to the house, I got in a minor verbal spat with my own sister. My ridiculous mother decided to call the police department to ingratiate herself with my brother's new family. Well, I'm 150 lbs (but still pretty tough) and a 270 lb gorilla showed up to learn me some manners about how to act when in Rome.
He practiced some Krav Maga on me, probably something he just learned and was aching to demonstrate. He twisted my carpal tunnels around, bend my injured knees around a bit, damaged nerves in my left hip and left wrist. Stood on my scoliosis, stretched a tendon in my left shoulder....
And then the police department itself put me in a hospital! I could have walked it off in a couple hours, but the cops run this hospital. They have the doctors and orderlies continue to be very abusive so as to keep you in shock for days (5 for me) and then they try to have a doctor threaten you with institutionalization because you had a delusion about police persecution!
That's their system, and apparently the Red Staters really truly like it that way. Keeps the outsiders and Mexicans out! Or so these fools think. They think they can keep the Mexicans out! They'll be in for quite the shock themselves when they find out Rupert Murdoch has been lying.
And that it's them that have to learn spanish after all. Glad I speak it, that's for sure.
/sarcasm?
[clarification] Is /sarcasm on on either misunderstanding replier as such or my "RNC mouthpiece"?
In the UK the Murdoch press certainly has a long history of taking political positions and meddling with society. But I don't know what they're saying over the duck pond, especially about Mexico.
That will stop this cold.
The sooner Americans stop fooling themselves into believing that nonsense, the sooner they can start to fix their broken country. Until then (and it will probably be a long time), try to avoid cops, because they can shoot you for free.
It reminds me of a time one of my liberal co-workers tried to mock libertarians by saying "But laws are for the weak, right?" I don't think they realized how utterly true they were.
I'd think that FOIA wasn't the main law they were setup to dodge, it is just a side benefit. My bet would be about some finance related limits/laws.
That sounds safe...